2008 hurricane forecast

Summary: Early part of season will be marked by storm that hits the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. After that the season will be markedly suppressed due to an

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, Apr 1, 2008

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Summary:

Early part of season will be marked by storm that hits the
northeastern Gulf of Mexico. After that the season will be markedly
suppressed due to an El Nino forming. The most interesting feature
of the year will not be in the Atlantic so much as the Pacific, where
the dam built on the Yellow River--Three Gorge Dam, will have a
dramatic regional and even global implication on weather and climate.
The big concern is regional drought--to the entire Pacific basin.
Despite the return to more normal ice cover levels in the Arctic this
winter with La Nina, the summer and fall is when climate change from
CO2 is meaningful in the northern hemisphere, and the Arctic will
continue to open, but probably not as much if the El Nino forms hard
like I think it will. The big time melting and opening will continue
more following this El Nino.

But I think El Nino does form, and form before the peak of the
season, and forms in such a way to suppress the season dramatically.
It forms because, frankly, there is no other place on earth where
there is much microbial activity, and this La Nina has made for a
place where upwelling of nutrient rich waters has occurred--it won't
take long for the biological feedbacks that enhance heat trapping
clouds to kick in and already SSTs are warming up in Nino1. The QBO
also indicates a suppressed season. There is no significant volcanic
activity, and no interesting trends that I see in what the moon or
the sun are doing, cycle wise. In short, except for Three Gorge, the
forming El Nino will be the domanate feature in the weather and
climate landscape. Therefore, my numbers are going to be very low.
10 named storms, 4 hurricanes, and 1 major storm--a fish in the mid
Atlantic.

Discussion.

Everyone knows that ENSO really has a big impact on global synoptics.
But no one without electrics

can explain the teleconnections. And as it turns out, electrics is
really helpful at explaining why

La Nina is a particularly worrisome condition for people living in
the Atlantic coast and Gulf of

Mexico who are concerned about tropical storms. The traditional
explaination is that there is a

lack of shear.

Even leading scholars are talking about 'shear'. Last year Chris
Landsea in an interview talked

about a study which indicated that with warming oceans from climate
change may come greater 'shear',

which would actually decrease the number of tropical storms. And so
the first thing that pops into

someone like Landsea's head is shear--which lacks of understanding of
electrics.

It does turn out that the warmer the oceans are, the more conductive
they are. But to have a

capacitive coupling you have to be able to hold charges from above,
too. It turns out there is a

trick in here--that is rooted in Coulumb's law. That's because the
atmosphere toward the poles gets

thinner and thinner and when you are talking about a static field its
strength is proportionate to

an inverse of the distances squared between attractive charges. Where
static charges can exist are

in the conductive oceans AND the ionosphere--which is closer to the
earth the farther north you go.

So if you have a thinner atmosphere the charges from above and below
are going to couple with

greater force.

Thus, in terms of how electrics helps to organize how clouds behave,
and in particular how a

tropical storm is organized electrically, just the fact that the
atmosphere is thinner can make up

for the fact that the oceans, compared to the tropics, are colder and
thus less conductive.

Moreover, in the fall the ozone layer from the full summer of
inclination of the earth derived UV

light, is at its greatest levels in the northern hemisphere. And, of
course, the ice is the least

and the oceans warmest in the northern hemisphere. All this occurs in
the context of a 'thinner'

atmosphere.

During El Nino, displacement currents from lightning from the
Americas can leak out the tropical

west Pacific and increase walker circulations. These circulations get
so large that they bring rain

to Califoria in the winter--the rain pattern remains farther south
and there are less cold core

storms. But if the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the tropical
Pacific are cold anomaly as in La

Nina, displacement currents from lightning can't leak along the
tropics. The tropics must compete

with low impedence events brought about because the atmosphre is
thinner in the north and it's

easier to make capacitive couplings through a shorter distance. In
the winter La Nina means for us

in the Pacific northwest that we're going to have a more cold core
systems than usual, and that

certainly played out. But it meant and means a similar thing for
those in the Atlantic as this

storm season comes.

The traditional explaination for the wind and ocean temperature
dynamic isn't real sound to expain

itself, either. Not just that the ENSO models themselves are all over
the map but even if you KNOW

what the SSTs are you cannot tell with decent forecast skill if the
warm pool will stay or go or

reverse itself. The flips of one state to another and just as
importatly the teleconnections that

derive from them or the movement from El Nino to nuetral to La Nina--
and how rain patterns respond

to these changes are not well understood by traditional descriptions.
And, yes, I will be the first

to admit that I am talking about a complexity, that there are other
processes involved that have

electrical influences. Including a volcanic erruption or as was the
case in late 2004 a tidal wave

near Indonesia.

The biggest problem that those who advocate the pure traditional
arguments about ENSO is how the

teleconnections influence patterns instantaniously--that there are no
ways for winds and pressures

2000 miles away to in real time affect immediately what occurs at
another location. But with

electrics there is a reasonable way to describe the statics and the
dynamics.

Cold core systems all spring occurred in the North Pacific consistant
with La Nina SSTs and the fact

that the colder saltwater is the less conductive it is--and how those
displacement currents from

South America have to go SOMEWHERE and with La Nina they tend to go
to the North Pacific in the

winter . . . so what is to follow as the spring comes and in the
upwelling of those cold SSTs the

nutrients start biological activity and those waters become more
conductive--and the ITCZ becomes

more conductive, then displacement currents from South America and
with the changing season then

America--these currents flow away from the Americas to the ITCZ and
away from the Atlantic as

conditions move away from La Nina. But we are not there yet. While
there is some warming of the

oceans off the Panama/South Mexico coasts, the middle of the Pacific
remains anomaly cold. That

means that the displacement currents can't escape away from the
Americas, and sets up the classic

signature of increased risks of tropical storms in the Atlantic basin
for the early part of this year.

But more than just the incident of storms, there is also the same
feature of cold anomalies in the

tropics that might counterintuitively mean that a storm would move,
like cold core storms did this

winter in the Pacific, north of the tropics in the Atlantic. That
there is a sort of double threat

here brewing--not just that there is more energy for capacitive
couplings in the Atlantic with La

Nina, but also that there is less electrical organization in the
tropics that might hold a storm

there in the tropics instead of allowing a storm to move north toward
the United States.

AMO warming -- but also indications of low levels of Phytoplankton
activity.

To me the season will be marked by the nature and extent of the cold
anomalies in the Pacific--how

long do they last? As long as they are there, there will be a risk
of an early storm, that

threatens the northeast Gulf of Mexico--given what red tide
complaints were last year and the lingering affects of La Nina. From
here the season will likely be defined by Three Gorge dam.

What we know by history is that if a large dam isn't shutting down a
season globally, then you

might start to see a pattern of repetitive storms along almost the
same track such as we saw with
Itaipu from 1977-1982. There was heavy activity in 1933 following
river changes to the Mississippi, Rio and Colorado--then the Dust
Bowl years.

Then with higher CO2 watch for lower impedences when in fact surface
lows occur. That can mean more intense but fewer events globally but
the bio implication remains what it is, a modulating influence. You
should see the continued melting of the Arctic ice sheet particularly
during the summer and winter from normal levels--because that is when
there is more lightning in the northern hemisphere and the change is
about a drop in resistance in the global electrical circuit, not
about CO2 as a green house gas.

Last year my prediction of Storms--16, Hurricanes--8 and Majors--5
was close to perfect, but I wrote that "These numbers are largely
speculation--but I will say that because of the reasons I have
outlined, there is no history on which you could make much of a
meaningful prediction." What I mean by that is unlike Phil Klotzbach
who relies on a statistical analysis, I would point out just the
opposite that the modulating influence of the macrobiosphere distorts
the past. Statistics relies on taking, for instance, from the jar of
marbles a sample to figure out what is in the jar and then what you
might pick out of the jar on the next sample. But if the marbles in
the jar are CHANGING, the target you sample is moving, and if it
moves too much, it's a waste of time to even use statistics. And
clearly when you have such a huge human activity like Three Gorge
there is little in the past that you can point to to figure out just
how the influence is going to change that jar of marbles. That's the
problem. Overlay Three Gorge on top of the additional problem of CO2
as an electrical element in tropical storms--how it affects their
impedences in the capacitive couplings I have been describing . . .
and then add the melting Arctic, which has a HUGE electrical meaning,
and perhaps the best you can do is to look at what the biosphere is
doing. That's really the best you can do--and right now the
microbial biosphere--as reported in the NPR link below, is at a low.
To me, that was a sign of the warming oceans and the lack of
nutrients from upwelling cold waters, among other things. And this
is a cyclical deal, if it be of modulating or dampening ability. But
I think it tells you something, tells you that a shife is coming,
that a big El Nino is on the way. But that big El Nino can be
prevented if instead of the displacement currents going to a Walker
circulation, to sustaining a change in the SOI pattern winds, it goes
to a storm like an Ioke, leaving nothing left electrically to alter
clouds in the Pacific ITCZ. In any event, either an Ioke, an El
Nino, or a global drop in storms altogether from Three Gorge is going
to suppress activity in the Atlantic. Could it be suppression like
that which occurred with big El Nino in 1997? I am not sure it will
go THAT far. Yet it doesn't have to go very far to suppress the
season in the Atlantic. However, before that El Nino sets in if
enough activity gets going in the Atlantic--particularly around
Florida, these storms themselves roil the oceans enough for microbial
activity to follow in the wakes of these storms.

Notes:

From an electrics standpoint, the most interesting place on earth, as
far as climate change and Co2